hurricanes

Gone with the wind? Hurricanes could destroy the offshore wind farms the US is planning to build in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

The US Department of Energy set a goal for the country to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2030. One-sixth is to come from shallow offshore turbines that sit in the path of hurricanes.

Talk about a “d’oh” moment.

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them.

You don’t say. Each wind farm costs about $175 million.

Safe, reliable and eco-friendly – well except for the birds they regularly grind up. But hey, in the ocean those birds drop into the sea and no one ever sees them. They provide chum for the fish (if a bird gets chopped up in the ocean and no one sees it does it make a sound?).

That’s good … right? No? I’m confused. PETA, where are you?

Reading the obvious and understanding that they’re going to do this anyway (somewhere in this you, Mr and Mrs. Taxpayer, are paying a hefty chunk of the bill and taking most of the risk) makes you realize how, well, “not so bright” many of those who “lead” us are or how much they really don’t care about the outcome of what they do if it satisfies some voting constituency. As long as they have access to your tax dollars or borrowed dollars with little or no accountability, this sort of nonsense will continue unabated.

More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.

Dr. Les Hatton says he is neither “a warmist nor a denialist”, but a scientist. And as a scientist he took a look at the IPCC’s claims about hurricanes and found them wanting:

Hatton performed a z-test statistical analysis of the period 1999-2009 against 1946-2009 to test the six conclusions. He also ran the data ending with what the IPCC had available in 2007. He found that North Atlantic hurricane activity increased significantly, but the increase was counterbalanced by diminished activity in the East Pacific, where hurricane-strength storms are 50 per cent more prevalent. The West Pacific showed no significant change. Overall, the declines balance the increases.

“When you average the number of storms and their strength, it almost exactly balances.” This isn’t indicative of an increase in atmospheric energy manifesting itself in storms.

Says Hatton, after running his statitistical analysis and reading the IPCC report, he found it’s conclusions could not be supported by the data:

The IPCC continues: “It is more likely than not (> 50%) that there has been some human contribution to the increases in hurricane intensity.” But, as Hatton points out, that conclusion comes from computer climate models, not from the observational data, which show no increase.

“The IPCC goes on to make statements that would never pass peer review,” Hatton told us. A more scientifically useful conclusion would have been to ask why there was a disparity. “This differential behaviour to me is very interesting. If it’s due to increased warming in one place, and decreased warming in the other – then that’s interesting to me.”

It would be interesting to others as well since it might indicate the observed warming was a result of regional weather, not global warming. Hatton has put his work on his personal web site (you can see it here) and issued an open invitation to prove his analysis wrong. Al Gore has said he’ll get right on it.